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Constance Howell

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Constance Howell (fl. 1877-1900) was a socialist and political novelist.

Career

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Howell was a socialist and her novels had a political dimension. Like contemporary political novelists, such as Clementina Black and Margaret Harkness, Howell's novels sometimes suffered from political critique.[1] Her most well-known novel was A More Excellent Way (1888), which is thought to be semi-autobiographical. It recounts the "counter-conversion" of the protagonist Agatha Hathaway away from her upper class upbringing and Christianity and towards freethought and socialism.[2][3] It was reviewed harshly in The Spectator,[4] and To-day: Monthly Magazine of Scientific Socialism wrote that:[5]

"...we made a vow never again to look into a book calling itself a Socialist novel. We broke that vow and we have been duly punished; and we hereby do our best to save our readers from a similar infliction by warming them on no account to read the latest literary effort of Constance Howell. It is a perfectly preposterous production."

Howell also wrote a series of three books for children during the 1880s, which explained elements of Western religious history from a critical freethinking perspective and all shared the subtitle "Written for Young Freethinkers".[6] These were: Biography of Jesus Christ (1883), The After Life of the Apostles (1884) and History of the Jews (1885).[7]

Identity

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Howell's dates of birth and death are currently unknown.[8]

Select publications

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  • Daisy and the Earl: A Novel (1877)[8]
  • Biography of Jesus Christ (1883)[6][7]
  • The After Life of the Apostles (1884)[6][7]
  • History of the Jews (1885)[6][7]
  • A More Excellent Way (1888)[2][9]
  • Many Days After: A Novel (1900)[8]

References

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  1. ^ Hapgood, Lynne (1996). "The Novel and Political Agency: Socialism and the Work of Margaret Harkness, Constance Howell and Clementina Black: 1888–1896". Literature & History. 5 (2): 37–52. doi:10.1177/030619739600500203 – via Sage.
  2. ^ a b Schwartz, Laura (2013). Infidel Feminism: Secularism, Religion and Women's Emancipation, England 1830-1914. Manchester University Press. p. 91. ISBN 9781526130662.
  3. ^ Carter, Ronald; McRae, John (1997). The Routledge History of Literature in English: Britain and Ireland. Psychology Press. p. 301. ISBN 978-0-415-12342-6.
  4. ^ "A More Excellent Way, by Constance Howell (Sonnenschein), is so..." The Spectator Archive. 6 October 1888. Retrieved 9 March 2018.
  5. ^ To-day: Monthly Magazine of Scientific Socialism. British Print. and Publishing Company. 1888. pp. 186–187.
  6. ^ a b c d Wadsworth, Sarah (2023), Dalbello, Marija; Wadsworth, Sarah (eds.), "The New Woman in the White City: Writing from Great Britain in the Woman's Building Library", Global Voices from the Women’s Library at the World’s Columbian Exposition: Feminisms, Transnationalism and the Archive, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 135–154, doi:10.1007/978-3-031-42490-8_8, ISBN 978-3-031-42490-8, retrieved 22 April 2025
  7. ^ a b c d Schwartz, Laura (2013). Infidel Feminism: Secularism, Religion and Women's Emancipation, England 1830-1914. Manchester University Press. p. 252. ISBN 9781526130662.
  8. ^ a b c Bassett, Troy J. "Author: Constance Howell". At the Circulating Library: A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837-1901. Retrieved 22 April 2025.
  9. ^ Trotter, David (2003). English Novel in History, 1895–1920. Routledge. p. 27. ISBN 978-1-134-98018-5.
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